Abstract

NAVARRO-VALENCIA, Martha Cecilia. Hegemony and Health?: Culture and Forms of Assistance to the Sexual and Reproductive Health Demands of a Socially Excluded of Women Collective (the Case of Poor Afro-Colombian Women of the City of Buenaventura). Rev. Gerenc. Polit. Salud [online]. 2011, vol.10, n.20, pp.14-33. ISSN 1657-7027.

This article is comprised by the description and analysis of the perceptions, customs and answers that poor Afro-Colombian women in the town of Buenaventura have to the problems arising from the assistance given to their reproductive health. Even though events like birth, death and sickness are natural happenings, first and foremost they have to be conceived as sociocultural facts whereby various population groups take action and construct their own techniques and ideologies. It is then from this scope that I approach the situations that lead these women to use the two main systems of health assistance that are in the town; the hegemonic or biomedical system and the traditional system. This article aims at elucidating how the decisión of these women to opt for one way of assistance or another is strongly influenced by geographical order, cultural, social and economic factors. The studyholds an interdisciplinary character as it was formulated using several viewpoints such as social anthropology, health anthropology, gender studies and sociology.

Keywords : Social exclusión; poverty; sexual and reproductive health; Afro-Colombian women; pacific región in Colombia; medical anthropology; sexual and reproductive rights; social security; primary health care assistance; domestic medicine; rural context.

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